BUZZ
Also vote to give $1 million raise to university president during rare Sunday evening board meeting
Michigan State University trustees would be punished for criticizing board actions outside of meetings under a resolution passed during a Sunday evening meeting.
Trustees also voted to give current President Kevin Guskiewicz a $1 million raise, doubling his salary.
“The new policy states that trustees will support and not undermine decisions made by the majority of the board,” according to Bridge Michigan.
Trustees must also pledge to “uphold the university’s reputation, not provide misleading or false information about the university or divulge confidential information and will act after the board decisions ‘consistent with our fiduciary duties, including the duty of loyalty.’”
Members who break the rules could face consequences including “public censure” and a loss of perks given to trustees, including “complimentary tickets to all home and away athletic events, including all suite access privileges,” according to the resolution.
The board passed the resolution by a 5-3 vote, led by Board Chair Brianna Scott (pictured), a Democrat. Four other Democratic trustees voted in favor of the resolution. Republican Mike Balow voted against the resolution, as did Democrats Dennis Denno and Rema Vassar.
Balow said the new resolution will limit free speech.
“It’s very disappointing to me that this abomination of a university policy is being put on the agenda on a Sunday night at 8 o’clock,” Balow said, as reported by WILX.
“This is something that is absolutely an assault on the First Amendment of any person who is serving in any sort of elected capacity and an assault on the governance capability of those of us who might be in the minority at any given time,” he said.
Balow, Denno, and Vassar have been clashing with other board members and university leadership for the past several months over transparency, according to The State News.
Vassar said the new board policies will create a culture of secrecy like that which contributed to the cover-up of abuse by former university doctor Larry Nassar, a serial sexual abuser who also worked for Michigan State. The university paid $500 million to settle lawsuits from Nassar’s victims.
Vassar, the trustee, said at the meeting:
$500 million, that is what this university paid because the culture of institutional silence allowed a predator to operate in plain sight for decades.
That culture did not require villains, who went along, trustees who deferred, who asked no questions, administrators who protected their own, a general counsel whose office ran interference on investigations instead of supporting them, a board that treated loyal leadership as the highest virtue and accountability as an inconvenience.
The new policy comes after Denno and Vassar settled a lawsuit from a university professor.
Professor Jack Lipton sued Denno and Vassar for defamation after the pair accused him of being a racist and organized a campaign against him. Lipton used the term “mob rule” to describe a contentious board meeting where Vassar’s allies showed up and shouted down criticism of her.
Trustee Scott, and Lipton, had raised concerns about business deals Vassar made that appeared to conflict with her work on the board.
According to the lawsuit, Vassar accepted gifts from a university donor, including traveling on a private jet. She also appeared in an ad endorsing a former trustee’s private wealth management business.
The university agreed to pay $300,000 to end the multi-year lawsuit in January 2026, as The College Fix previously reported.
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